Does God Let Us Say “No”?

Wm. Paul Young

On a recent visit to movie set of The Shack, I was able to spend a chunk of time with my friend, the theologian Brad Jersak. He’s the author of Toward a More Christ-Like God, Her Gates will Never be Shut, Stricken by God and other works. He is editor of a brilliant website called Christianity Without Religion.

We were talking about the great questions of life and asked if he could record my response to one of those. I thought you might enjoy it as well.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue, and how God protects our ability to say no. Please feel free to respond in the comments below and keep the conversation going.

Also, it’s been a joy to hear from everyone who’s been diving into the story and voice of Eve over the past week. Purchase the book here to see what all the fuss is about: https://wmpaulyoung.com/eve-book/

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Written By Wm. Paul Young

Author of The Shack, Cross Roads, Eve & Lies We Believe About God.

Let’s all PANIC!

Wm. Paul Young

“Let’s all PANIC!”

Those of you who hang around my rarely active FB page and other social media platforms, have become accustomed to me not posting much, and not unless I think it is something that might be actually helpful.

Well, this morning I was in an email conversation with my dear friend Dr Kevin Freiberg and I want to post part of that exchange because I found it very helpful myself, and thought you might too.

First, here is what Kevin wrote:

“I’ve been thinking about the Coronavirus…

It was a far-away problem I was largely disconnected from until…
it put a huge dent in our business this week with several cancelled engagements and more likely to come.
It sucks, but it pales in comparison to those who are sick and worse, those who have lost loved ones.

Even though I give intellectual assent to the fact that I’m not, I live my life as though I’m in control until…
something like this happens and the truth becomes real.

The world is pretty stressed right now, largely because people are trying to exercise control over an uncontrollable situation.
The “breaking news” of the media feeds the frenzy, planting the assumption in our minds that one more piece of information will help us take one more step toward control until…
it doesn’t, because another person, in a new place, with the virus is discovered.

Then, it ratchets us up to a new level of panic.
But here’s the thing. If perfect love and fear cannot coexist, panic, though a strong temptation, is never effective.
Very few people look back on crises like this and say, “I wished I’d panicked more. You know, like it really helped.”

Maybe the question for the world right now, and for me personally, is: “Where are You in this and what is it about Your love that I need to understand?”
Maybe the posture should be one of expectancy, knowing that the One who calmed the wind and the waves, the Lover of life, can heal the nations, whether miraculously on His own or through the hands of others.

In the midst of my own stressful ebb and flow I hear a Voice saying…
“I’m still God. I’m still here and you are mine.
You’ve got this because I’ve got you.””

And now here is my response, which in no way is intended to correct anything but to add to what Kevin has written:

“Wonderful words and deeply true and helpful…thank you!

I also think that part of the temptation to fear and control is media immediacy…we have a sense of being a global citizen. Many of us have never learned to live and stay inside the grace of our own day, so we think we can live other’s grace for them; that by worrying on their behalf we are being helpful. “The poor you have with you always” is not Jesus dismissing the plight of the poor, but resisting the temptation to get dragged into the illusion that he, that day, was a resolution to the global issue of poverty. He chose to love the actual poor person who was in front of him, not the imagined masses of poor people who were not.

Panic is almost always future-tripping, creating disaster scenarios outside the scope of the day you find yourself. It isn’t the crisis directly and presently in front of you, but the crisis imagined and perceived to be approaching.

The back-handed grace of fear is that it exposes the idols that we actually trust; money, certainty, control, power, empire etc, and with such exposure we are given daily crossroads, crosses, that we can pick up or avoid. The choice to pick up the daily crosses that people deliver to us is the choice to remain in the day and trust. Trust is ALWAYS in the present tense. Imagining trusting in an imaginary future scenario is to leave the present (presence) where love has you, for the illusion of control under the guise of imagined trust. Joy is present tense, because presence is present tense and our ability to respond is present tense and Trinity abides with us present tense.

My verse for this year (mostly NASB with a little PY clarification) is Hebrews 3:13 En-courage (add courage) to one another, as long as it is about TODAY (emphatic Greek, all CAPS in NASB), so that you are not swept away by the deceitfulness of brokenness.” We truly don’t need to try and encourage anyone about the future because it is a myth and even the imagination of it is illusory, and there is actually no need to do so if we are in the embrace of relentless affection TODAY. TODAY is the day of wholeness and salvation, the Sabbath Rest. Sufficient to the day is the grace, the daily manna of sustenance and joy. Take no thought for tomorrow, grace will meet you in the morning.

We have so baptized worry that we have renamed it responsibility. “Then we Panic (Jackie Frieberg).”

Love you each. LOVE has you!”

And one last word from Kevin: “For me, your entire response affirms and is summed up in my prayer/desire: “I want to love You with my trust TODAY.”

My Mum Passed on New Year’s Eve Day Last.

Wm. Paul Young

My mum passed on New Year’s Eve day last, and now I stand on the cusp of the first Mother’s Day since. I am certain she now better understands me and that is a comfort. But we, or perhaps it is I, who will have to wait for another time to fill in all the cracks; stress-fractures caused by the weight of this world’s burdens and separated our hearts. Like me, she didn’t choose to whom she was born or the timing of her entrance, although her exit she yearned for long before it came. She was exhausted by all she knew and all she had forgotten.

My mum passed on New Year’s Eve day last, and more than a few times in the last days I have been reminded that it’s time to send her flowers and a note, and then I remember. It is in these spaces in between busy that the sneaker wave catches me and knocks me slightly sideways. Our Mothers are the ones who held us into being, carried us safe while we rode the waves within, practicing for a life of shifting landscapes while trusting in the invisible’s embrace. Like those the first glimpses of faith we are bewildered, but still we came out trusting, having been already washed while anchored deep within the gated waters. Though it took the shadow of death for her to see the depths of her participation, she only perceived a fraction of its scope while in this world.

My mum passed on New Year’s Eve day last, and left me thinking about fireworks. One solitary flare burst from the earth and arcs into the darkness. Those with eyes to see are captured by its presence, entranced with expectancy and eager for the outcome. And it is always a surprise. So often we think of ourselves as only the solitary flare, rising upward from the earth trying to break free from the gravity of earth. We are so aware of the broken parts that we have little hope for outcomes. And that lonely flare dies just before it explodes in light and color, forming quickly shifting and free-falling wonder for those with eyes to see. I think my mum now has those eyes and looks upon her own life in ways to which she was blind while here. She didn’t know that brokenness at most infects to six or seven generations while each kindness, each act of the forgiving, each prayer uttered in the tension doubt exerts, each momentary wholesome laughter, each touch so gentle in its purity of intention, each and every good and right and pure and loving gesture ripple to a thousand generations.

My mum passed on New Year’s Eve day, and left me sad for all our sadness and praying for our eyes that do not see, and deeply grateful and comforted that she at last has sight!

The Killing House

Wm. Paul Young

And so we gaze upon the lynchpin, the fulcrum and the crux of the cosmos, that we have killed Ourself in self-destructive rage, trying to blot out the memory or Our self-consuming shame, to kill Our Life that fought against Our tenacious embrace of death…only to discover that even here We are loved completely, to the same relentless depth that We have always been.
Wm Paul Young, Holy Week, 2018

A few days ago, I entered again through the checkpoints, body scans and gates onto the prison grounds of Death Row in Tennessee. It is eerie to walk past the killing house, the building in which the executions take place. Here all the modern equipment is ready to resuscitate the doomed man whose heart might stop prematurely. The State wants to have the satisfaction of wielding the sword and not be thwarted by some stress-induced trauma and heart attack. Also, in that building are the poisons and protocol; a procedure that even includes the ritualistic sterilization of the needles.

We meet in the library. I along with my friends, Wes, and Joe, gather with a dozen men who live here in Unit 2-A, also waiting.

I think that Jesus sends us to those in prison not for their sake but for ours. Their prison is obvious, and while they cannot leave it we often cannot even see our own places of incarceration. We need their clarity, but instead we hide them away, out of sight and out of mind, giving them little voice with which to speak to us, or help us. So, Jesus sends us to them.

For three hours we are together face-to-face, a handful of brothers who deeply love Jesus and each other. Three of us have actual execution dates, and without a miracle of human kindness their days are indeed numbered. Here in this room, the cruelty of ‘human justice’ is unmasked by the simple and intense commitment of these men to life and love and each other. Some, like my friend Terry King, has been on Death Row for 34 years, waiting since he was in his early twenties. He is one of the freest human beings I have ever met.

Should we turn a blind eye to injustice, to betrayal, to murder, to abuse? No. That is exactly the point. There should be no blind eyes. And yet human justice stands with eyes covered, blind. With such blindness, we lose sight of our humanity. The restorative justice of God requires eyes that see, not only the victim, but also the human being who is the perpetrator.

True just-love must see everyone. It must take all into account; the perpetrator, the victim, the community, everyone, and seek to restore the broken hearts of every participant and group. You cannot sever justice from love. If you do, not matter how you coat it with moral or religious language, it is masked vengeance enacted to appease the fury of our anger against death, and we will take it out on those whom God also loves.

Perhaps we have mixed intentions? We desire healing for the victim while knowing in our heart of hearts that we have no power to accomplish such a miracle, so we perpetuate the myth that somehow vengeance is healing and restorative. We also know that only love and relationship can heal broken hearts. So, we resort to age-old ways of attempting to restore through sacrifice; the killing of something living to fight what death has perpetrated. We preach that this is how we balance the scales of justice; that through death we will heal what death has done. How twisted is this? Is that not why Cain kills Abel, because he feels the slight of what he has perceived to be unfair? Is that not why the State and Religion turns upon Life Himself and hangs Him on a cross?

If what is normative for the State in its understanding and promotion of ‘justice’ as punishment and retribution, ought we not immediately to suspect this is contrary and antithetical to the kingdom of Jesus? Is this the best that the world systems have to offer? Justice, bereft of love, is only vengeance. If our understanding of justice requires that we put to death a human being in order to achieve it, we have sold ourselves a lie; that death can heal, that death can restore, that death can right a wrong. Only life and love have the power to do any of this.

In John MacMurray’s soon to be released book, A Spiritual Evolution, there are two brilliant chapters on the nature of Justice.

“Can punishment undo, offset, atone, or make up for sin in any way?
Can punishment, regardless of the amount or its severity, change or untwist the wrong into, right?
Can punishment change and heal the brokenness in me that wanted to do evil in the first place?
I’m suggesting punishment is powerless to do any of these things. And if I’m right, that punishment has no ability to amend, undo, or atone for evil, then why do we believe that punishment is required for justice to be called justice?”

It appeals to the beast in us that, even if we have not been caught for the evils we have perpetrated, someone else was. How easy it is to find ourselves in the mob of those yelling, “Crucify him, poison him, electrocute him,” and then slip back to our routines in which we betray, lie, cheat, gossip and hurt with impunity.

What makes this more pernicious, is that many who profess to be lovers and followers of Jesus participate in the perpetration of vengeance on behalf of the State, with the blessing of Religion. And why? At times we believe we are the righteous sword of God’s justice, and that such justice is retributive and punitive. Again, neither has any efficacy to heal or restore. We cannot simply turn away and wash your hands and say, ‘What is truth?” when Truth himself stands in front of us.

“Vengeance is Mine,” says the Lord, and we all sit back and say, “Finally!” But then God adds in the same text, “Repay evil with good!” The vengeance of God is ‘Goodness?” The idea is so repulsive and infuriating that in our next breath we mutter, “If You aren’t capable of vengeance, we certainly are. Step aside and we will crucify him.”

The incarnation of God in Jesus, in part, was to accomplish this: God becomes fully what we are in order to, as us, absorb our diabolical thirst for vengeance, our twisted and perverted sense of justice, and by becoming our scapegoat and sacrifice, destroy the power and false promises of death. This is so we might learn to live with resurrection life, so we would never need to kill another human being again.

Prisons ought not be places of retributive vengeance, but places that create boundaries and discipline for the purpose and intention of healing and restoration. Reconciliation and rehabilitation in the best sense. Every judge and lawyer ought always to have in their hearts and actions the desire to bring healing to every person and situation they serve and protect, not simply be enforcers of State or Religious law.

The world says of these men whom I love, ‘these are past redemption’ – therefore, they are dead to us. But it takes time to go through the necessary hoops to sanitize our decision and make it palatable, to baptize it in our Religious/State language so that these killings will be sanctioned and acceptable. And again, here is the exposure and why Death Row becomes an expression of back-handed grace; these men love each other, love God and love humanity. God did this miracle of restoration in spite of human justice. What has happened in their hearts and in the hearts of many of their victims, is true justice. It is firm-handed love that seeks the wholeness of all involved. It requires forgiveness, confession, repentance, the owning of both the wrongs and the self-righteous judgments. In our punitive vengeance, have we also not become perpetrators ourselves. Who among is without sin and has the right to cast the first stone? If Jesus refuses, where does that leave us? Jesus lives in them, and the State with the support of Religion will crucify him again, and again, and again.

For three hours we told stories, cried, hugged and finally stood in a circle, holding hands. Each of us has a date with death, it’s just a matter of time. The men pray, profound prayers of trust and hope and forgiveness and kind blessing for those who have chosen to be their enemies.

Our hearts breaks, and in response our eyes leak as Abu, an elderly dignified man who has travelled the road from mental illness, to Islam, to Jesus, lifts up his powerful voice embedded with the resonance of a life of loss and love, and slowly sings our common language:

Amazing Grace,
How Sweet the Sound,
That Saved a Wretch Like Me
I Once was Lost
But now Am Found
Was Blind
But Now
I See

SaveSave

How we treat the children in our lives is a measure of our humanity.

Wm. Paul Young

I once saw a poster that showed a series of photos starting with a large Collie dog in between two small black pups. In the last photo the (miniature) Collie was dwarfed by two huge black Retrievers. The caption: “Don’t forget, they grow up.”

The bullied and abused child grows up. The well-loved child grows up. We can only silence a voice for so long, but it will eventually be heard, in art, song and creativity or in destructive fury. Every person incarcerated or sitting in positions of power was once a child. How we treat the children in our lives is a measure of our humanity.

There is a Scripture that in the English is translated, “Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old they won’t depart from it.” Sadly, it is a poor translation and led to the belief that strict discipline was the means to keep a child in the way they ‘should’ go. It not only was destructive in relationships between adults and children but didn’t work. How different when you understand the intent of the Hebrew language in which it was written. “Train up a child in their way, and when they are old they won’t depart from it. In each child is written their own manual. Every child has their way, and it takes time to perceive and respectfully understand the uniqueness of each child’s way. One way to do that is to listen.

We all agree that it is our children who are the future. Across our nation and around the world their voices are rising, speaking to us who have brought them into a world both harmful and bountiful, like a shipwreck carrying treasures. They are broken-hearted, yet hopeful, and ready to call the powers to task. They are the smallest but often the most powerful of prophets. May we who are the lions, the leopards and the wolves, stop…and listen.

A few weeks ago a dear friend sent me a note with a poem written by their ten year old grand-daughter. It speaks with a clarity profound and prophetic. May we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying.

WILL IT BE

Ana Puncochar
(10 years old)

Shall it always be in this world
Injust
Ignorance
To woman kind
Overpower
To male kind
Understatement
To child kind
How can our pledge talk of justice for all
When this may never be a reality
If no being has will
to step up to this
We will
Underestamated
Child
You may be brave
But only the bravest step up for what is right
Only the strongest admit that they too have weaknesses
These bravest
Are small
These strongest
Are short
But
These bravest
Are smart
These strongest
Are brave
Smart enough not to pretend to be another
Brave enough
To not try to be anything
But themselves
If nobody stands up
We will
And we’re not afraid to
So shall it be
That you stand
Or we stand
For liberty and equal rights for all
Man
woman
child